TOBA, Mie -- An aquarium here has announced the discovery of a new species of Bopyridae, parasitic crustaceans that latch onto hapless shrimp and crabs.
Toba Aquarium in the Mie Prefecture city of Toba has dubbed the new species "Ebi no Yutanpo," literally "shrimp's hot water bottle," for its alleged resemblance to the cold winter night companion. It has also been granted the Latin scientific moniker Pleonobopyrus kumanonadensis.
According to the aquarium, 50-year-old curator Takeya Moritaki collected one of the "water bottle" parasites from the underside of a type of crangon shrimp he found at a depth of 280 meters in the Kumano Sea off Owase, Mie Prefecture, western Japan, in June 2017. He asked friend and researcher Nobuhiro Saito, 53, to have a look at the little creature, and confirmed that it was previously unknown to science.
"This shows once again how diverse the Kumano Sea really is," commented Moritaki.
The creature was identified as a new species as no Bopyridae parasite had ever before been associated with this particular type of shrimp, and no Bopyridae had previously been seen attached to a shrimp's abdomen and facing in the same direction as its host. The findings were published in the international online journal of the Carcinological Society of Japan.
Bopyridae are related to shrimp, crabs and other arthropods, and are part of the same group of small crustaceans that includes pill bugs. They tend to attach to a host's abdominal area. There are some 600 varieties of the parasites worldwide, and about 100 have been reported in Japan.
(Japanese original by Kazushige Hayashi)
The Link LonkNovember 18, 2020 at 05:37AM
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'Hot water bottle' parasite on shrimp identified as new species by Japanese aquarium - The Mainichi
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